Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I've updated a couple of things now:

• The Tank is now just a simple WDH.
• I updated the Setup with new icons, but I'm still not 100% sure about the Princess, General, or Nightrider.
• I removed all the stuff about icons, setup, and alternate moves from the Notes (leaving just one sentence).

(I could not find the usual "Knight with a Rook hat" icon on the list, nor any better Knight/Bishop combo than the one I used.)

Bob, you seem to have questions about the icons and I don't understand well what are the problems. If you use Musketeer's

https://musketeerchess.net/p/tools/boardpainter/

then, there is a lot of solutions there. On the right you have a table of many lines and 4 columns. Let's say the white Knight is (1,3). My suggestions would then be:

Chancellor: (5,3) or (6,1). The one you have is better for RK than for RN.

General: you use (76,1) that I would have used for the Lancer, instead. I would have picked (76,3) for the General.

Lancer: I would have used (76,1) which looks like a Greek hoplite that had long lance. Or (80,3), or (82,1) or (83,1).

Nightrider: it seems that you've made your own icon. An alternative could be (91,3), a flying Knight (pegasus).

Princess: the (21,3) you have in the move diagram was OK. I don't like the one you put in the setup. The conventional one for BN are (5,1) or (6,3).

Tank: (134,3) or 156,3) are exactly tanks.

I've made a mini-board for illustration purposes; I'm not sure I understand your notation.

1. Chancellor: I don't understand. The one I have there is literally a Rook and a Knight.
2. General: You mean the axe, or the shield?
3. Lancer: Am I getting these suggestions right? The one I'm using may be a spear rather than a lance, but it does seem more suggestive of the job (at least, to me).
4. Nightrider: I had thought to use this Pegasus, but I wasn't sure it was appropriate. I'll go ahead, then.
5. Princess: HG seemed to be against this one in a. I'm checking that I read your coordinates right; if so, I'll go with column c.
6. If these are the ones you mean, I really prefer medieval siege engines over modern tanks.

Chancellor: I don't understand. The one I have there is literally a Rook and a Knight.

Yes, but is not nice. (6,1) is more usual. Look here for example https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/heavy-chess

General: You mean the axe, or the shield?

none of them, my mistake. I meant the one at (72,3)

Lancer: Am I getting these suggestions right? The one I'm using may be a spear rather than a lance, but it does seem more suggestive of the job (at least, to me).

sorry, lance or spear are translated as lance in French, so I don't know the difference.

Princess: HG seemed to be against this one in a. I'm checking that I read your coordinates right; if so, I'll go with column c.

in c. you mean the Fortress with a Rook on top of a Rook? That is a terrible choice for a BN.

If these are the ones you mean, I really prefer medieval siege engines over modern tanks.

Musketeer has several siege engines icons. I understand your reluctance for a tank incon, but then, why do you call it a "tank" if you don't want a tank? You may call it otherwise, Trebuchet, Onager, Catapult, Ballista, ...

Chancellor: Oh, the horse with the inverted Rook base? That one tends to confuse me, as I rarely look at the base of an icon, but I'll use it if HG concurs.

General: I don't think I'm understanding your coordinates. Following from my current General being (76,1) I'm seeing either a sort of Middle Eastern looking headpiece, or something that looks like Black Panther, depending on whether I have White or All clicked on the view.

Lancer: The difference is that a spear is a small head on the end of a long pole, whereas the lance is a long point with a short handle. That aside, though, did I interpret things right for what you were suggesting? (I'm also considering making it a K4 or K5 that can't capture in adjacent spaces.)

Princess: The elephant is equally bad, for a Princess. And I don't particularly like the horse-with-cross for a BN, either (it's not very clear); I may go back to the original one, in column A there.

Tank: I used the Tank term for simplicity. I could change it to Machine, if you and HG think it'd be better.

As far as I'm concerned, I use Machine or War Machine for the piece playing as WD. I use it widely and for a long time.

With All clicked on view, I have your current (white) General at 76,1 coordinates (76th line, 1 column). The Black Panther is (73,3), the sort of Pasha is (71,1) and what I was thinking as a general is a sort of officier's military jacket on (72,3).

OK, I see your suggestion for General now. I think it could work, especially if HG concurs.

Ditto on renaming Tank to Machine.

For the Lancer, I wish I could get something like the one used in Orda Chess, but Board Painter doesn't seem to have that.

About Lancers from Orda Chess you can go to GitHub and download the SVG of Lancer (which was even refreshed in this year by my noting that its ribbon had thin border; so I say it because it’s in open source).

That's a reasonable suggestion, Lev, except that I don't think there's any way to add it to the Musketeer Board Painter from where I sit.

Communication is a difficult matter :=) You misunderstood me: as I use Machine for WD, I cannot be in support of using this name for something else. It is your game and you do what you want to do, but my recommendation would be to use another name among the plenty available for ancient siege engine. Thanks.

I've updated the Setup illustration to reflect what's been discussed so far, though I'm still not 100% sure about the Lancer and (especially) Princess.

Jean-Louis: OK, I think I understand now. I don't know about there being "plenty" of names, but I find that the icon I'm using is basically an old Roman engine called a helepolis. So that'll have a letter symbol of H, and a move of WDH.

Excellent choice!

I've updated, as well as I could determine, all the text and graphics for the discussion up to this point. I think I'll have to correct some stuff for the Lancer, and I'm still not sure that everyone will find the Princess acceptable, but otherwise I think it's almost ready to take it for a spin (that is, load the Betza notation into the test applet and see if anything's too weak or two powerful in practice more than theory).

I am still uncomfortable with the lancer. It switches colors only when capturing at (3,0) which is very rare with your rules. I'm still a fan of HDY, but of course, that is your call.

…except that I don't think there's any way to add it to the Musketeer Board Painter from where I sit.

What is MBP? btw I can open these SVGs in Inkscape (where they were drawn) and convert into PNGs if you use PNGs in your diagrams.

Lev: This. (My eye and hands are really no good at trying to do anything freehand, so I try to use machine systems for things when I can.)

Aurelian: What if I were to change the Lancer's (4,2) move to just one or two Knight moves (K2)?

I'm also considering just giving a Queen's move, but not able to capture one space away (without any Knight-like moves).

@Bob, I don't know. It depends on what you want from this piece!

With the Lancer, I'm mainly looking to make it more powerful than a Knight, less powerful than a Queen, and not too similar to a Nightrider.

As it happens, when I first tried to include this piece I was only aware of it being used in theoretical problems with a (4,2) jump. I've since learned that it's used in Orda Chess, where it moves (without capturing) like a Knight, but captures like a Rook. I may go to that way of doing it if what I have here seems to clunky (also to provide consistency).

Then the orda chess lancer seems in line with the historical use of the lancer!

As far as I can tell, the Orda Chess Lancer almost is the historical use of the Lancer, not counting the theoretical problem-solving use.

I did find the Lancer in a few other games (Lancers Chess, 8-Piece Chess, and Full Cavalry; there probably are others) where the Lancer jumps any distance in a predetermined straight line, then turns to determine the direction of its next move. I also see Lancers with various other abilities in Pawn Shoji (which can truly be called the "historical" version), TigerChess, Wild Jokers, The Starbound Sliders, et al., none of which seem satisfactory to me. So, it's either a double-range Knight with an added 2-3 space capture-only slide, or the version from Orda Chess.

PS: It occurs to me that, given the preceding, a Piececlopedia article on the Lancer might be in order. (I similarly see many applications of the Falcon besides my Falconer, including two versions of Shogi, also possibly warranting an article.)

The thing with the Piececlopedia is that the articles are primarily supposed to be about the pieces, not the names — so a page about “the Lancer” isn't really well‐defined in the sense you mean.

Some of the ‘Lancer’s you mentioned do have some history of their own: you've noted that the Lancers Chess turning piece has uses in a few games (albeit all by the same author); the (4,2) leaper, though rare due to its severe binding, has been used by problemists (as the Stag), as well as in a couple of games by Charles Gilman (as the Charolais); the Wild Jokers piece is more commonly known as an Alibaba, which already has a page; TigerChess' lancers are also well‐attested (most commonly as Modern Dabbaba/Elephant) though without pages; and the Pawn Shōgi and Starbound Sliders pieces are (apparently one‐off) enhancements of Shōgi's Lance. It might also be noted that there was a proposal to rename Betza's Fibnif (which also has a page) to ‘Lancer’

Of those that don't have pages already, the ‘Modern’ 2‐square leapers and the (4,2) probably deserve articles, assuming anyone is up for writing them; the one from Lancers Chess might as well (it's an interesting piece and the only one herewhich doesn't exist under any other name) but the fact that only one person has used it might disqualify it (though standards have varied in the past)

As for Falcons, George Duke's piece has seen enough use (not to mention an independent reïnvention) that it probably deserves a page; the fBbR Hunter counterpart (a.k.a. Hawker) might do too though a comprhensive overview is probably more difficult as it's very easily independently devised